GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — The municipality of Gaza — one of the largest in the Gaza Strip — took a new step to address the eight-year-long Israeli siege that greatly affected the work of all service sectors. The municipality’s officials worked for several months to overcome the lack of cars for use during municipal work, and found a solution: bicycles.

The project, welcomed by Gazans and environmental institutions, is only just the beginning. Its organizers are waiting for financial support from donors to reproduce in other Gaza municipalities.

Abdel-Rahim Abu al-Qumbaz, the director general of the Health and Environment Department in the Gaza municipality, told Al-Monitor that the lack of cars in the municipality is nothing new. Transportation has been an ongoing problem for years, prompting engineers with the Health and Environment Department to consider alternatives.

Qumbaz noted that in February, a number of engineers presented the idea to provide a bicycle for each of the 50 inspectors at the Health and Environment Department as an interim solution. “We thus raised the project to the municipality in May and it was approved and implemented in early September, after 7,000 euros [$7,893] were provided by the Municipal Development and Lending Fund (MDLF), a semi-governmental association created in 2005 to support the reform and development efforts of local bodies,” Qumbaz said.